Now, Blizzard Chief Creative Officer Rob Pardo has added more fuel to the fire, telling Polygon that a console build of the game is currently "up and running" in Blizzard's offices, and "looking pretty cool" to boot. While Pardo said the team is "hoping to get it far enough along where we can make it an official project," the company is still not at the point where a console port can be officially confirmed. Diablo III lead designer Jay Wilson added that the company is "exploring console options," in case that was still unclear.

A console version of Diablo III wouldn't be totally unprecedented—the original Diablo received a PlayStation port in 1998, complete with a local co-op mode. More recently, the Xbox Live Arcade port of Torchlightproved that the basic Diablo formula can work just fine on a living room TV with a handheld controller. While Runic hasn't ruled out a similar console port for Torchlight 2, Runic Games CEO Max Schaefer told IGN in September that such a move would require extra development time and downsampling of the game's art assets.

Blizzard has continued to update the existing PC and Mac versions of Diablo III, most notably by extending the level cap and adding a challenging "Infernal Machine" boss mode for late game players. During an investor call last month, Activision Blizzard president Mike Morhaime confirmed an expansion pack for the game is in the works but refused to comment on the timing of its release.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.